On Thursday, at the end of Coinbase Q3 Earnings CallCEO Brian Armstrong admitted he was “a little distracted” as he “watched the market predict what Coinbase will say in their next earnings call.”
“And I just want to add the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking and Web3 here to make sure we get them before the end of the call,” Armstrong added.
Why expose them without obvious context? As Armstrong hinted, they were words that users in the “reference markets” on Kalshi and Polymarket had bet on that would be said on the call. So, in a word, Armstrong was allowing some of those bets to pay off.
reports Bloomberg that while quote markets remain a relatively niche part of prediction markets, a total of $84,000 had been wagered on whether certain words would be said on the cryptocurrency company’s call. And while Armstrong may have helped some Kalshi and Polymarket users make a little money, he also illustrated how easily these markets can be manipulated once the executives take notice.
In fact, Jeff Dorman, CIO at digital asset investment firm Arca, wrote to X that “your head needs to be examined if you think it’s cute or smart or clever that the CEO of the biggest company in this industry openly manipulated a market.”
“It’s no fun working tirelessly for 8 years trying to educate institutional investors on the value of investing in cryptocurrencies as investable assets and working to help them get comfortable in this industry while one of the supposed ‘leaders’ openly mocks the industry with such crap,” Dorman said.
Polymarket, meanwhile, was posted that Armstrong’s comments were “the devil’s work.”
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Coinbase is moving to support prediction markets itself through Everything Exchange, which Armstrong mentioned on the earnings call, and the company has also invested in Kalshi and Supermarket. A spokesperson for Coinbase told Bloomberg that the company prohibits employees from participating in prediction markets or related activity around the company.
After Armstrong’s comments began to gain attention, wrote to X“lol that was fun – it happened out of the blue when someone on our team dropped a link in the chat.”
